Working with electrons in the bizarre realm of quantum mechanics, they first created the equivalent of a break for a game of pool.

The “balls” scattered and, according to the laws of physics, should have appeared to split in a haphazard way.

But researchers managed to make them reform in their original order — looking as if they were turning back time.

Lead researcher Dr Gordey Lesovik, of Moscow’s Laboratory of the Physics of Quantum Information at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, said: “We have artificially created a state that evolves in a direction opposite to that of the thermodynamic arrow of time.”

His team used a rudimentary quantum computer, which carries information on subatomic particles. He hopes their findings, in journal Scientific Reports, will help improve processing power.